“Now
that’s
thinking positively. And speaking of ‘positively,’ positively I’ve got a good thing going. And positively Max is no axe-murderer. So lighten up and be happy for me. I’m happy. God, I never dreamed what getting connected to the Internet could lead to!”
“Has your Web surfing led you to a list of baby names anywhere? We’re having the damnedest trouble deciding. All these cute clothes already, but still no name! I’m going crib shopping again tomorrow evening. Want to come?”
“I promised I’d be at Larrimore’s headquarters tomorrow right after work. I’m just going to grab a quick bite first and run right in. I don’t know anything about cribs anyhow.”
“I could call Audrey. She’d know about cribs Or Joan. Or Marlene. Or Kayla.... We could get some other baby supplies while we’re at it. I still haven’t gotten baby powder, diapers, Q-Tips, crib sheets, a blanket....” And she was off, planning an evening with her new friends, billowed away on a gale of baby plans, caught up in baby-this and baby-that. Kari felt that Lylah seemed to be talking to herself, not even noticing if Kari was listening.
Would she even notice if I got up and left?
Shortly after that, she did get up and leave. She had had enough baby conversation for one evening. She felt out of the loop. “I’ll talk to you soon,” she said as she left, and she remembered when that wouldn’t have been necessary to say. When it would have been taken for granted. When they often talked several times a day.
Suppose he snores like a steam engine, picks his teeth with your Things to Do list, smokes a cigar, stinks up the bathroom, doesn’t bathe, has nasty teeth....
Lylah’s litany of possible problems echoed in her head all the way home, but she tried to dispel the gloom that had settled in her car.
Everything’s going to be fine...if he gets here.
Which he intended to, as she learned when she got home and logged on.
My dear,
Circle Friday night on your calendar. I’ll take off around 5:00, arrive your place around 9:00. Please send exact directions. I’ll stay till mid afternoon on Sunday.
If you’d like, I can make a big dinner for Sunday at noon. Do you do breakfast-lunch-dinner on Sundays, or brunch-dinner, or breakfast-dinner-supper, or what? Do you object to a man taking over your kitchen for a meal? Give me your thoughts. I want this visit to be a pleasure for you, not an intrusion.
I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed last night. My toes are still tingling...along with select other parts.
My maleness is swollen just since I sat down at the computer to write to you. “He” knows what’s in store for “him” this weekend, and “he” can’t wait! Neither can the rest of me. My arms long to wrap around you, my lips to kiss your soft lips, my eyes to feast on your beautiful body, my nose to inhale the sweet scent of your clean hair, my fingers to touch you all over and get to know you intimately, and my tongue to taste every inch of you.
Oh, my sweet Kari, what beautiful love we’ll make together...and what a wonderful time we’ll have out of bed, too. I want you to show me your favorite possessions in your house...your favorite places in Jeffersonville...and pictures of your family, because they’re a part of you.
No “hot talk” this letter...I don’t want to heat you up and tempt you into relieving the pressure yourself. I want you with a full head of steam, three days of pent-up longings and no satisfaction, when we meet, and merge, on Friday.
I’ve been at it since early this morning, sweet Kari, and I’m tired. I have another long day in front of me. Another breakfast meeting. I promise you, it’s business! And so I’m going to download some recipes and then go take a shower. I’ll read a little and turn out the light by 10:00. By the time you read this, I may be asleep already...dreaming of you and our Friday rendezvous.
Till then,
Max
A sweet letter, she thought. And how nice of him to reassure her that his breakfast meeting was strictly business. How did he know she was worrying about that very thing? She was only worried about one thing he’d said—
“My eyes to feast on your beautiful body.”
What if he didn’t think her body was so beautiful when he saw it?
But she refused to dwell on negative thoughts. Kari’s innate optimism was the reason she always bounced back from unhappy encounters with men. Immediately, her mind jumped to a negligee she’d seen in a window downtown. It was in a shop near the office. The negligee was black, cut full rather than tight, and would make her look glamorous—and thinner. She’d buy it tomorrow!
Kari answered Max’s letter, including precise directions for getting to her house from the Interstate, and asked him to bring pictures of his family with him. Next, she answered her other email and, since it was still early, she browsed around online awhile, downloading recipes, posting comments on a bulletin board, exploring what was still largely unfamiliar territory to her. At length, with thoughts of Max keeping her unable to concentrate on what she was doing, she logged off. After showering, she went to bed.
The human body is perverse. Just because Max had implored her to build up her desires, she was more filled with need than ever, and it took every ounce of willpower not to take steps to relieve that burning need. Images of Max floated into her mind. Max kissing her breasts, Max holding her tight, Max grinding his male hardness up against her, Max burrowing that engorged flesh into her churning depths, Max....
Abruptly, she sat and up and turned the light on again, reaching for the book on her night table. She read till her eyes would not stay open any longer, and only then—long after her usual hour of sleep—did she put down the book and turn out the light again. She knew she’d be groggy in the morning, but at least she knew she could go to sleep now.
For a few minutes, as she drifted in the neverland between wakefulness and sound sleep, her mind was a jumble of hazy thoughts. Lylah—they were drifting apart, weren’t they? It was terrible to lose a friend. Babies—would she ever have a husband and a family? Max—what if Lylah was right and he
did
have some terrible habit, some overwhelming bad quality that she could not live with, something she couldn’t discern by email? Well, better to find out now than later. Besides, she doubted it. Steve—he and Lylah hadn’t had sex in ages, and still, Lylah was sure of his faithfulness. Would she, Kari, ever feel so confident in a man? Dinner Saturday—maybe she and Max would share the kitchen, each cooking part of the meal.
And that was the final coherent image in her mind before sleep claimed her. Max and her working side by side in domestic bliss in the kitchen.
Chapter 9
Kari was grateful for the busy pace at work on Thursday. Max had again not sent a morning letter—he’d warned her he had another business meeting—but the knowledge that she’d see him Friday night...
tomorrow!
...kept her bobbing on a cushy, glittery cloud all day. Still, the time would have really dragged if not for the particularly demanding workday. If ever a person was actually appreciative of crushing deadlines and an impossible work schedule, Kari, on that Thursday, was it.
But finally, her watch read 5:00. Kari scooted out of the office faster than a politician pursuing a major campaign donor. The negligee was still in the lingerie shop window, and Kari went in. “Do you have that in an extra-large?” she asked, pointing to the garment she had eyes for. The clerk produced it, and Kari took it into the fitting room.
She looked at herself in it, and she knew Max would be entranced. It hid her ample figure well, draping elegantly to the floor with a full sweep, yet plunging at the neckline to expose the full roundness of her voluptuous breasts. Lace in strategic places added softness and elegance.
There was a clothing store next to the lingerie shop. Wanting something new and smashing, Kari browsed the racks and came up with a full-cut, pleated, teal blue dress. She could dress it up if they ate out, or wear it casually during the day. The largest size they had it in was an 18, but it was a loose-fitting dress. Too, she’d actually succeeded in losing three pounds, yet another factor that had propelled her into her upbeat frame of mind, so she took the dress into the fitting room optimistically.
But the dress just didn’t fit. Too small, too tight, it just wouldn’t work. Suddenly, the dress was more than a dress. It seemed a metaphor for something more. Her relationship with Max? Her weight-loss effort? Life itself? The dress wouldn’t fit, and the relationship wasn’t going to work, her weight-loss effort was a failure, and life stunk.
Tears burned her eyes and misted her vision as she blindly scrambled to yank the offending garment off her oversized, hulking body. She nearly tore it in her wild scramble to rid herself of the piece of fabric that was causing her so much pain. At last, she was free of the dress, but now she was facing her mirror image with only her underwear covering her mass of flesh and fat.
Yes, fat. There was no getting around it; Kari Crandall was a fat woman. Fat. Overweight, obese, more-than-just-hefty. Fat. What would Max say when he saw her in the buff? How would he react making love to a blubbery body? When he pulled off the black negligee, if the lights were on, how would he cope with the body he revealed underneath?
Her head buzzed; her eyes burned worse than ever. In a panic, she scrambled back into her clothes, leaving the teal dress in the fitting room and rushing blindly out of the store. In the car, she let go and bawled, her eyes overflowing, her wails so loud that more than one passerby stopped and looked in the car. She motioned each one to leave her alone, and they all did.
At last, she calmed down. Thank God for the roll of paper towels in the car. She had it there for such contingencies as cleaning off the windshield, but she used it now for blowing her nose and wiping off her smeared eye makeup. Her face was a riot of colorful rivulets, blue eye shadow and black mascara and liner cascading down her face in large, teary drops, and mixing with her blush.
Opening her purse, she got out her makeup case, then turned on the car’s overhead light. As best she could, she reapplied her makeup till she looked at least semi-human. That was better than she actually felt, but looking decent was a start. Her eyes were still red-rimmed, but there wasn’t much she could do about that.
She skipped dinner, only munching on a candy bar from her purse. When she walked into Larrimore headquarters, Jeff looked up from the computer and stared at her hard for a minute. Kari realized he was debating what to say about the condition of her eyes. “Don’t ask,” she said.
Jeff shrugged his shoulders as if to say, “Have it your way,” and returned to the computer. He seemed very intent on his job.
“What’s up?” she asked him, trying to keep her voice light.
“Trying to recover some files,” he answered almost curtly, without looking up.
“Delete something you didn’t mean to?” Kari asked.
“
I
didn’t,” he seethed.
Kari looked around. Eileen tilted her head sharply toward the far side of the room, in a “Come over there with me and we’ll talk” gesture. Wonderingly, Kari followed her.
Knitting her brows in a puzzled expression, Kari asked, “What’s up?”
“Someone deleted some vital files from the computer.”
“By accident?”
“I doubt it. The backup copies on the floppy disks are gone too.”
“What’s missing?”
“Larrimore’s speech for Friday night, and the list of registered voters with who’s already been called and who said they’d vote for Larrimore.”
“Who had access?”
“The last one here last night was Jeff. He stayed behind after everyone else had gone. Of course that makes it too obvious...I can’t believe he’d be so stupid as to do it when everything points to him. Then again, I can’t believe he’d do it to begin with. But since no one else saw anyone messing with the computer, it does look bad for him.”
“Oh, I don’t believe...Jeff couldn’t possibly have...no way!”
“I agree with you, but Russ and the others...they seem to think it looks like Jeff must be the one. They’re keeping an eye on him. Larrimore himself is seeing red. Beyond red. Purple with chartreuse polka dots.”
Kari giggled at that picture. It felt good to giggle again. But the laughter didn’t last long when she thought of poor Jeff unfairly accused...and she knew it was unfair, just knew he hadn’t done it.“Do you suppose the same person who made the flyers disappear is responsible?”
“Hmmm...that’s a good guess, but I don’t know. Something fishy is going on, for sure.”
Kari drifted back over to the computer. Jeff was still working at it. His forever grin was gone, replaced by a furrowed-brow concentration. “I have some software at home that I might be able to use to recover the lost files,” he said. “I’ll be right back.” Jeff lived five minutes away.
The re-do on the mailing was back from the printers. Nothing had happened to these cartons; they were all lined up on the floor. Several volunteers were working at a long table, and Kari joined them. It was dull work, but Kari let her mind wander, thinking of the upcoming weekend with Max. Kari’s black spirits had lifted, and her usual optimism reasserted itself.